A. They are stockholders. The property formerly owned by them was at that time purchased by the Standard Oil Company.

Q. When you speak of purchasing their interest, you do not exclude them from their interest? They united with you and remained as your associates in the business?

A. If it was not from the fact that ours was a corporation, we might call it a co-partnership.

Q. They becoming interested in yours, and you in theirs?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. And you simply used your name to represent the joint ownership, as it was a corporation?

A. Yes, sir.[[128]]

Full as the testimony on the Standard Oil Trust gathered by the Federal committee of 1888 is, its report touched but one point, and that was its organisation. To the committee it seemed that the agreement under which the trust operated was such as to make it exempt from the anti-trust legislation which was then contemplated by Congress. The legislation proposed was directed against “combinations to fix the price or regulate the production of merchandise or commerce.” Now a mass of testimony had been presented showing that, from the starting-point of the Standard’s history with the South Improvement Company, its aim has been to regulate the output of refined oil so as to fix the price, but this testimony, the committee saw clearly enough, did not apply to the trust which it was investigating. For—so swore the trustees—they had nothing to do with the business operations of the separate concerns. They simply held the stock of the various corporations, exercised their right as stockholders, received and distributed the dividends. Each company did its own business in its own way. The trustees were not responsible for it. There was something humorous to those familiar with the oil world, in the idea of J. D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller, J. D. Archbold, Henry H. Rogers, Charles Pratt, H. M. Flagler, Benjamin Brewster, W. H. Tilford and O. B. Jennings, having nothing to do, as trustees of the Standard Oil Trust, but to receive and divide dividends, engrossing and interesting a task as that undoubtedly was. But, as a matter of fact, nothing else could be settled on them by anything in the testimony. For instance, in 1887 there was an alliance formed between the Oil Producers’ Protective Association and the Standard for limiting the production of crude oil (a movement of which we shall hear more later). This certainly was in restraint of trade. But, on examination, the committee found the contract had been signed by the Standard Oil Company of New York. The trustees had nothing to do with it! Taking up, point by point, the conditions of which the oil producers complained, not one of them could be fixed on the trust. It had made no agreements, signed no contracts, kept no books. It had no legal existence. It was a force powerful as gravitation and as intangible. You could argue its existence from its effects, but you could never prove it. You could no more grasp it than you could an eel. Certainly the Committee on Manufactures was justified in confining its report to pointing out the fact that the Standard Oil Trust agreement was a shrewd and slippery device for evading responsibility.

And there the investigations of 1888 ended. There had been much noise over them, and for what good? So asked the discontented oil public. It simply had secured the form of an agreement which could no more be touched by legislation than human greed. It was characteristic that the oil public, intent on immediate remedies, should be discouraged. If they had applied to their cause the same patience and foresight Mr. Rockefeller did to his, they would have realised that, as a matter of fact, a respectable first step had been taken toward their real goal, a goal which has not by any means been reached—that is, a legal form of organisation for corporations doing interstate business which would enable the public to know promptly if they were securing special privileges or were restricting trade. This first step was in securing the famous trust agreement. That was now in the hands of people given to thinking about things, and something came of it, even more quickly than the philosophical observer of public events might expect, and in this wise:

In 1887 there was elected to the attorney-generalship of Ohio a lawyer, something under forty years of age, named David K. Watson. Two years later Mr. Watson was a candidate for re-election. One day, while busy with his campaign, he came out of his office in the state-house on the public square in Columbus, and, crossing the street, stopped, as he often did, at a book-shop to look over new publications. He happened there on a small yellow leatherette volume entitled “Trusts.” It was written by William W. Cook, of the New York bar, and cost fifty cents. Mr. Watson bought the book and spent the evening reading it. At the end he found the Standard Oil Trust agreement. It was the first time he had ever seen it. He read it carefully and saw at once that, if it was a bona fide agreement, the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was and had been for seven years violating the laws of the state of Ohio by taking the affairs of the company from the directors and placing them in the hands of trustees, nearly all of whom were non-residents of the state. Mr. Watson knew on the instant that, if this were a bona fide agreement and he were re-elected attorney-general of Ohio, it would be his duty to bring an action against the Standard Oil Company of the state. He laid the little book away until he knew the result of the election.

DAVID K. WATSON
Attorney-General of Ohio from 1887 to 1891. Mr. Watson brought suit against the Standard Oil Company in May, 1890, in the Supreme Court of Ohio.

FRANK S. MONNETT
Attorney-General of Ohio from 1895 to 1899. Mr. Monnett brought suit against the Standard Oil Company in 1897 in the Supreme Court of Ohio.

LEWIS EMERY, JR.
Independent oil operator and refiner. Leader in movement for free pipe-line bill and anti-discrimination laws. Founder of the United States Pipe Line.